True Left

Ian Cushing, lecturer in English and Education at Edge Hill University, believes tackling the ‘word gap’ – the difference between the language range of typical middle class and working class or disabled youngsters – has ‘colonial’ roots.
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schools were characterising pupils from ethnic minorities and low income families as ‘deficient and limited’ because they ‘failed to meet benchmarks designed by powerful white listeners’. The study claims that common interventions, such as encouraging pupils to speak in full sentences and use standard English, are ‘tethered to colonial logics’ and blame marginalised pupils and their families for their ‘apparent failure to use the right words’.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s “unnecessary” use and praise of English has some citizens alleging he has a “complex.”

Yoon has been heard using English terms on several occasions, even when the events did not call for a mixing of languages.

In a meeting on June 10 with the leaders of the ruling People Power Party, Yoon brought up a name change for Yongsan Park, a newly opened former Korea base for the U.S. Forces.

While suggesting a new name, the president said, “When you say ‘National Memorial Park’ in English, it sounds cool, but when you say ‘Gukrip Chumo Gongwon,’” referring to the Korean equivalent of the name, “it doesn’t, so I don’t know what to call it in our country’s language.”

In another incident on June 8, Yoon spoke about how “In advanced countries like the U.S., former ‘general attorneys’ are widely positioned in politics and government,” saying “general attorneys” in English.

Yoon’s seemingly unnecessary inclusion of English in his official statements have sparked debate in South Korea as to whether the new president is showing bias toward the U.S. and the West more broadly.
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In another speech, Yoon pledged to make Busan Port an international, massive “megaport,” with the last word in English again, despite “megaport” not being a familiar term to most Koreans.

Main opposition Democratic Party of Korea Representative Cho Eung-chun stated on an MBC radio show that Yoon appears to have “some sort of complex about English,” adding that the president had mentioned Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon’s fluency in English as one of the first reasons for picking him.

In the last two months, staff at subway stations in the Chinese capital Beijing and the neighbouring city of Tianjin have been on a mission.

Signs and route maps with English names at the stations have come down and been replaced with ones with pinyin, or romanised, transliterations of the Chinese characters.

Instead of maps pointing out the stop for Tianjin Binhai International Airport, the directions are now to Binhai Guo Ji Ji Chang. Beijing Railway Station is now referred to as Beijing Zhan, and Olympic Park is Gaolinpike Gongyuan.

In Slavic languages, multiple negatives affirm each other. Indeed, if a sentence contains a negated verb, any indefinite pronouns or adverbs must be used in their negative forms. For example, in the Serbo-Croatian, ni(t)ko nikad(a) nigd(j)e ništa nije uradio ("Nobody never did not do nothing nowhere") means "Nobody has ever done anything, anywhere", and nikad nisam tamo išao/išla ("Never I did not go there") means "I have never been there". In Czech, it is nikdy jsem nikde nikoho neviděl ("I have not seen never no-one nowhere"). In Bulgarian, it is: никога не съм виждал никого никъде [nikoga ne sam vishdal nikogo nikade], lit. "I have not seen never no-one nowhere", or не знам нищо ('ne znam nishto'), lit. "I don't know nothing". In Russian, "I know nothing" is я ничего не знаю [ya nichevo nye znayu], lit. "I don't know nothing".

Negating the verb without negating the pronoun (or vice versa), while syntactically correct, may result in a very unusual meaning or make no sense at all. Saying "I saw nobody" in Polish (widziałem nikogo) instead of the more usual "I did not see nobody" (Nikogo nie widziałem) might mean "I saw an instance of nobody" or "I saw Mr Nobody" but it would not have its plain English meaning. Likewise, in Slovenian, saying "I do not know anyone" (ne poznam kogarkoli) in place of "I do not know no one" (ne poznam nikogar) has the connotation "I do not know just anyone": I know someone important or special.
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As with most synthetic satem languages double negative is mandatory[citation needed] in Latvian and Lithuanian. Furthermore, all verbs and indefinite pronouns in a given statement must be negated, so it could be said that multiple negative is mandatory in Latvian.

For instance, a statement "I have not ever owed anything to anyone" would be rendered as es nekad nevienam neko neesmu bijis parādā.
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Double or multiple negatives are grammatically required in Hungarian with negative pronouns: Nincs semmim (word for word: "[doesn't-exists] [nothing-of-mine]", and translates literally as "I do not have nothing") means "I do not have anything". Negative pronouns are constructed by means of adding the prefixes se-, sem-, and sen- to interrogative pronouns.

In fairness to the kids, anyone under 50 seems to be similarly afflicted: This cohort can’t use tenses, prepositions and adjectives grammatically and creatively, or appreciate a clever turn-of-phrase, or conjugate verbs correctly. Has anyone noticed that the past perfect tense is dead in America? People will relate that they “had went” to school or “had came back from the cinema.”

Pidgin English is what the young, high-school graduate speaks. Pidgin English, or Ebonics if black. Oh, yes: Ethnic linguistic affectation and oddities are treasured as culturally and politically precious and authentic, rather than just lazy and plain ghastly.